Electronic commerce (eCommerce) and business-to-business (B2B) transactions over the Internet or other networks have a critical need for assurance and trust in the communications between partners in these transactions. When a partner receives a communication from another partner, the receiving partner wants to ensure that the communication received is indeed from the sending partner. For example, a supplier receiving an order for parts in accordance with a supply contract, the supplier wants to make sure that the person sending the order is the partner with whom the supplier made the contract, not an impostor.
Currently, merchants, buyers and suppliers authenticate communications such as contracts and payments using security credentials, such as digital signatures, cryptographic keys, digital certificates and tokens. Generally, this requires complex or specialized end-entity credential management application logic on client platforms. Credential management is the foundation of the trust infrastructure. It is typically handled by software libraries, which must be manually integrated with the software applications being used for the actual transactions.